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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7747039" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm an academic moral philosopher and lawyer.It is true that there is debate among moral philosophers about some of the things you mention (eg whether or not partilaity to one's own friends and family is morally permissible). There are very few moral philosopher who would think that consequences never matter to the morality of an action eg very few moral philosophers would think that an unsuccessful attempted murder is as culpable as an actual murder. And the view that there is no objective good or evil is a minority one, at least among English-speaking moral philosophers.I reiterate, however, that the D&D alignment system has never attempted to resolve any of these questions except for the last - it seems to assume some sort of moral realism. D&D's framing of goodness has always been indifferent to issues of partiality, trolley problems, the extent of permitted interpersonal trade-offs, etc. Eg Gygax's AD&D books characterise both "the greatest good for the greatest number" (which is Benthamite utilitarianism, and seems to permit fairly widespread interpersonal trade-offs) and respect for human rights (which obviously puts strict limits on interpersonal trade-offs) as modes of good action.If a player, in play at the table, struggles with a morally challenging situation, and then reaches a decision and goes with it, taking the view that what his/her character is doing is morally justified or even morally required, then I am not going to second-guess that player's engagement with the game. I personally don't find that that conduces to very egaged or productive play for me as GM to declare otherwise.Also, I personally don't think that it helps the situation to frame a GM declaration of that sort in NPC terms ("this is your god speaking!"); in a context where the god is meant to be all-good (which is the paladin default), this just means that the player now finds the rug pulled out from under his/her conception of the character and of the character's relatoinship to the divinity.If a player takes the view that his/her PC has morally erred; or if a player, as his/her PC, wants to contradict the divinity - eg because s/he thinks the divinity is mistaken; that's a different kettle of fish. But these are precisely the sorts of things that will come out of a conversation at the table.Well as I posted, in my game none. Issue of adherence to divine commandment, moral requirements etc are table matters, not GM adjudication matters.</blockquote>

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